I am sure that everyone here has heard of Harold Camping’s prediction that the world will end on May 21 of this year. Perhaps you’ve seen one of his billboards. Basically, he has come up with this prediction through a sort of numerological calculus of certain parts of the Bible. A Wikipedia article summarizes this; and if you care to search the Web you’ll see other explanations.
So, what do you think? I would like to hear from people who believe in God and/or practice Christianity as well as from people who don’t. I am quite new to this forum and a little nervous about even posing this question.
You may think I’m a fool for even asking this, but the whole business is getting quite disturbing, and I would like to hear some intelligent discussion, not simply dismissing Camping as an imbecile or Christians as deluded in general.
Regrettably, he made a simple error in his analysis. The world will end on 21 May 20011. Which makes quite a difference in practice. All due respect to the bloke for getting as far as he did though.
That’s a rather sneaky way to present an ad hominem argument, which I understand is not allowed here in this forum. Moreover, I did not say that I seriously believe it or that I seriously do not believe it. I simply am curious about what people think. But this isn’t about me.
Here’s what’s important: There are people who seriously believe it, and there are a lot of them, and they are vocal, and the effect they are having on others is not trivial.
In a previous message to this thread, I post two links to this effect.
You know that Camping also said that the world would end in 1994, right? It didn’t. Doomsday prophecies in Christianity aren’t new. Since the beginning of Christianity, almost, you’ve had people predicting the world would end on such and such a date. They’ve all been wrong. If you give me a year, I can probably work something out using the bible to predict the end of the world in that year. Just because someone says the world is going to end doesn’t mean you have to believe them.
Oh yes, I know about his earlier prediction. So do all the people who are riding around in caravans spreading the news about the Apocalypse. So what it is about THIS prediction that has enthralled so many people? And I mean, you need to read what Camping says to understand this.
A common theme in Apocalyptic prediction is that there will be a series of disasters to foretell the coming End. Various big earthquakes and floods and the Fukushima reactor leaks and the global financial crisis have all primed the world’s for this particular prediction. To put it simply, we’re in the mood
The world won’t come to an end on May 21st and a lot of people are going to be dissapointed about that.
I don’t think its THIS prediction, I think the same sorts of people get enthralled by pretty much ALL similar predictions. I’d pretty much guarantee that some of the same people were worked up about the prediction in 1994, and that when the world continues to exist after this year, they’ll still manage to get worked up about the next one.
The Huffington Post? You mean, the web site that publishes ‘serious’ articles by Deepak Chopra? It’s like the National Enquirer of web sites when it comes to pseudo-science and new-agey crap.
How many people actually take that prediction seriously? Enough to get on the news… but my mind just can’t conceive of more than 0.1% of the US population actually believing it. Or at least I really, really hope more Americans are not that gullible. Of course, 0.1% of the US population would be like 300,000—more than enough to make the news, although it’s kind of disturbing to imagine even that many people going for it. Also, the media and the public like to hear of weirdness, if only to point and laugh.
Let me revise that… I seriously hope it isn’t as much as 0.01%.
-g.